UPDATE 3-Neo-Nazi who killed Heather Heyer at Charlottesville protest gets life sentence

The self-described neo-Nazi who killed Heather Heyer when he crashed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters after a 2017 white supremacist rally was sentenced to life in prison by a federal judge in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Friday, local media reported. Attorneys for James Fields, 22, of Maumee, Ohio, had urged the judge to consider a lesser sentence for the Aug. 12, 2017, attack that also injured 19 people at the Unite the Right rally.

The rally proved a critical moment in the rise of the "alt-right," a loose alignment of fringe groups centered on white nationalism and emboldened by President Donald Trump's 2016 election. Trump was criticized from the left and right for initially saying there were "fine people on both sides" of the dispute between neo-Nazis and their opponents at the rally. Subsequent alt-right gatherings failed to draw crowds the size of the Charlottesville rally.